Dear Meg:

For a few years, you’ve been living with your boyfriend and your mother in a flat. The flat below yours has been rented to different students over the years. You can hear them talking, closing doors, etc. You wrote that even when it is quiet, you are worried: “Will I sleep, will I be able to sit normally in my living room”. You feel anxious, panicky at times, tense, nervous and helpless over the noise situation and the unpredictability of it. You’ve been “doing relaxations before bed, learning breathing deeply” in your efforts to relax this “Anxiety and panic over sounds”. You can’t afford moving out at this time and you worry that moving out will not solve the problem because there will be other neighbors in the next and next place. Also, “other noises aren’t scary for me”.

My input: you perceive the downstairs neighbors’ noise as a threat. This is why you feel fear about their noise. Other noises don’t bother you because you don’t perceive them as a threat. The fear developed over time because you couldn’t predict the noise, and you couldn’t feel safe that at any time it will be quiet. For example, you couldn’t count on 8pm- 12 pm to be quiet. No noise-safe zone for you.

What would be the point to relax and try to sleep between 8-10, if this is your bedtime, if so often before when you fell asleep at that time, or were just about to, you were awakened by their noises, is the worry.

At this point I have three suggestions but please post again because I may have more suggestions (I was in a very similar situation more than the one I mentioned to you):

1. Silicone earplugs (be careful to not push them in too far, keep them clean so to  avoid infection, use them according to instructions).

2. Noise machine, or it may be called sound machine or sleep soother, it is a small machine that produces a regular sound, such as rain, or ocean waves crashing against the shore, or a train motor sound, or whatever it is- a regular, non-changing sound that will give you the noise-predictability that you need throughout the night.

3. Check and see if you can get the neighbors’ attention and cooperation on closing the doors instead of slamming doors as well as not playing music or yelling or whatever they do between a certain hour to a certain hour, basically from your bedtime until the morning. If they cooperate, even if not  perfectly, you will feel better, or safer, simply because you know they try, that they care enough about your suffering to make an effort to be quieter.

– A noise is not as scary and distressing if we know that there is no intent on the part of the noise maker to harm us. So if they try to be quieter, the intent factor is gone and you will feel safer.

anita